Chapter 3: Designing a Partition Strategy

Data partitioning refers to the process of dividing data and storing it in physically different locations. We partition data mainly for performance, scalability, manageability, and security reasons. Partitioning itself is a generic term, but the methods and techniques of partitioning vary from service to service—for example, the partitioning techniques used for Azure Blob storage might not be the same as those applied for database services such as Azure SQL or Azure Synapse Dedicated SQL pool. Similarly, document databases such as Cosmos DB have different partitioning techniques from Azure Queues or Azure Tables. In this chapter, we will explore some of the important partitioning techniques and when to use them.

As in the previous chapter, we will again be focusing more on the design aspects, as per the syllabus. The implementation details will be covered in Chapter 5, Implementing Physical Data Storage Structures.

This chapter...